Japan

Japan > China

Interviewee: Lia Wei

What role does ‘world heritage’ play in local communities where you are?

Part of my effort while surveying and researching rock-cut sites in Southwest China was directed at challenging false information and demystifying the identity of the tomb builders, often made to appear more exotic than they probably were, for touristic purposes.

Touristic projects insist on disguising the sites as “barbarian” tombs. The danger of such attempts at the local level of heritage management is evident in the setting of the Qigedong site, where the height from ground of the caves has been enhanced by dangerously digging out the foot of the cliff, then hastily covered in cement, and a “barbarian-style” suspended bridge was added to access the site from the motor road across the river. Following this trend, the press newly disseminates the denomination “caves of the Lao people” (Lao dong僚洞), reflecting the efforts of county level institutions who wish to exoticize their local heritage. Ethnonyms associated with cliff tombs south of the Yangzi River such as the Bo僰, the Lao僚, or wider families of ethnic groups such as the Pu僕, the Yue越, can all be included in the wider denomination “south-western barbarians”. Such attributions have led to strong claims in the context of nation-building and the writing of national histories in Southeast Asia, as well as in the context of patrimonialisation in the area where I conducted fieldwork.

Please share a strategy that you have developed to approach, consult, mitigate, and resolve a challenging issue in your community.

Creative practices in Archaeology are just starting to be investigated, and the 8th edition of the World Archaeological Congress (WAC8) has inaugurated a new section entitled ‘Art and Archaeology’, with several sessions dedicated to cross-fertilization between artistic practice and archaeology.In mainland China, public archaeology is being promoted as an instrument of vulgarization at an institutional level, but private or small scale enterprises that propose alternative narratives for archaeological material are almost nonexistent.

In parallel to my research on cliff burials, a collaboration with cultural geographer and artist Rupert Griffiths entitled “Site_Seal_Gesture” created the opportunity to question research methods, heritage and interpretation. The project departed from the idea of proposing alternative ways of to re-imagine unwanted heritage, or heritage considered “without value”, such as the cliff burials I was investigating south of the Yangzi River. The county-level archaeological administration of Banan district, Chongqing municipality, allowed the experimental replication of a life size rock-cut cave in sandstone. The experiment was set in a protected heritage area featuring a former residence of general Chiang-Kai shek. The archaeological administration agreed to lend us two of the stonemasons then working under their supervision on a restoration project. The experiment lasted for two weeks and included sound recordings, interviews and two inscriptions were left in situ commenting the replicas. We were able to involve villagers neighbouring the rock-cut sites, migrant workers hired as masons on a local heritage restoration project, the local archaeological administration and future visitors to the heritage park in a piece of work that combined the needs of my research and a reflection on attitudes to the past in Chinese culture.

The study of art history and archaeology, as well as heritage and museum studies are rapidly blooming in Chinese academic institutions today. They face a situation where art academies are the places where theory, critique and the history of art are taught, while departments of history and archaeology have a privileged access to both sites and artefacts stored in museums. Attempts are made to build bridges between schools and departments, and fill the gap between art and archaeology. The idea of fine arts archaeology (meishukaogu 美术考古) is but one of the hybrid offshoot of these attempts. The rise of cultural heritage as a major is another potential disciplinary bridge.

What is the relationship between politics and archaeology in your community?

The archaeology of Chinese frontiers is a growing concern today, with the One Belt, One Road (Yi Dai Yi Lu一带一路) directives implemented by the current government. My research has been awarded by institutions that are traditionally concerned by the question of Chinese frontiers, such as the Chiang-Ching Kuo Foundation. However, it has also received strong logistic and financial support from academic institutions in mainland China that are increasingly committed to the study of frontiers, such as the Archaeology department in Renmin University. Recent research orientations promote transnational collaborations with Mongolian or Kazakh archaeologists for the study of sites located in Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang. The presence of international researchers and students in Chinese academic institutions, albeit in its incipient stage, could also lead to progress in a more multivalent view of frontiers.

Concomitantly to these transnational views, political and academic moods in mainland China are more than ever focused on imagining a future for Chinese national archaeology and national heritage, or the archaeology and cultural heritage of China as a nation. In the field of Historical Archaeology (or the archaeology of periods for which written history is available, which in China goes back to the early first millennium BC), a strengthening of methodologies with ‘Chinese characteristics’ is encouraged. This can be challenging when dealing with frontier areas, which are only partially integrated in historical discourse.

How does the archaeological administration contributes to archaeology as an academic discipline and vice versa in your community?

Much of my work in the field has been to share basic recording methods and techniques of lighting and photography, promote awareness of the cultural value of the sites, and exchange experience of the area and topic with local archaeological administrators.

County-level and provincial-level archaeological offices or heritage centres are the prime referents when it comes to the middle ground between publications and the actual sites. While provincial-level institutions usually possess a higher level of expertise, and are in charge of excavations, their advice is often insufficient when it comes to rock-art or open-air sites at the local level: such unmovable sites remain accessible only through local guides. Therefore, collaborating with county-level archaeological administration is unavoidable. Each of these local offices has its own practice, its main duty being to compile forms on the sites and monitor changes. Long-term, locally hired members of staff possess an impressive gazetteer-like knowledge of the area: they are familiar with the geography of the area, its ethnography, and collaborate tightly with local villager communities who live next to the sites. Most of them, however, who led the 2nd national-level cultural relics survey back in the late eighties and often personally discovered or first recorded the sites, are now on the verge of retirement. Since data collected during earlier survey is usually not edited or updated, these local officers remain an essential reference, since no further work has been done on previously recorded locations during the 3rd and last national survey. Without an experienced officer available, the main source of data held by any official institution is the 3rd national level cultural relics survey forms, despite the impressive amount of newly discovered material since 2010. The national survey’s format is standard across counties and provinces: it contains GPS coordinates, a discursive description of sites, a map of immediate surroundings with contour lines at a resolution that would not be directly available for researchers otherwise, scaled CAD drawings of the digs or sites, and photographs.

To collaborate with local archaeological administrators, Chinese language remains a prerequisite, as well as establishing relationships with Chinese academic institutions.

About Lia:

I studied Calligraphy, Seal Carving and Landscape Painting at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, and Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing (2007-2010). I took part in a collaborative experiment in contemporary ink painting – ‘Biface Graphy/Open Scroll’ (2009-2013) and in a China Ministry of Education funded research project on Buddhist epigraphy in Shandong Province – ‘Great Vacuity Buddha-King : Sutra Engravings and Visual Culture under the Northern Dynasties’ (2012-2016).

In 2010, I started my studies in Prehistory, Protohistory and Non-European Art and Archaeology at Brussels Free University, Belgium. After a MA in Religious Arts of Asia at SOAS, University of London, I am now conducting my PhD research on rock-cut burials along the Upper Yangzi River.

In 2014 and 2015, I lectured at the Art Theory department in Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing, for a one-term BA class on the ‘History of Sinology : The Study of East Asian Art in the West’, and at the Archaeology department at Renmin University, Beijing, for a two-terms MA class on ‘Comparing Values in Cultural Heritage : Landscape, Identity and Authenticity’. I am currently teaching the MA class ‘Art and Archaeology of the Silk Road’ at SOAS.

My research focuses on rock-cut burials on the Han empire Southwest frontier. Inscriptions date the man-made caves and carvings South of the Yangzi to the end of the Eastern Han empire (late 2nd to 3rd century CE), a moment of transition in political geography and of reconfiguration among cultural identities.

Although technologically related to earlier rock-cut ensembles in the neighbouring Sichuan Plain and along the main course of the Yangzi, in the Three Gorges area, the caves and carvings produced in this frontier region demarcate themselves in terms of their location in the landscape, their layout and iconography.

Survey in the Qi River valley conducted in 2014-2015, which connects the Sichuan Plain and the Guizhou Plateau, is here combined with case study comparisons accross several other Southern tributaries of the Upper Yangzi from Southern Sichuan to Western Hubei. Several of the burial ensembles which had been misattributed to later periods and labelled as non-Han practices, are in fact datable by both epigraphy and iconography to the late 2nd century CE, but they retain their specificity.

My thesis investigates this specific tradition of handling the dead as highly visible statements rooted in local landscapes, opening a window in the thousand years’ long process of culture change in the area.

Australia > Japan

Interviewee: Yumiko Nakanishi

What role does ‘world heritage’ play in local communities where you are?

To a certain extent, it has become a trigger to raise people’s awareness on heritage, such as heritage may restrict people’s life (particularly development wise), but it also comes with positive side effects (like economic growth brought by tourists, better planning and investments by the government etc.). As we have a candidate site, called “Mozu-Furuichi kofungun”, a group of tumuli including enormous royal mounded tombs, inscribed on the tentative list, sometimes world heritage is subjected to controversy. For instance, some conservative people or right-wing people do not want it to be inscribed as they believe the royal tombs should be treated as sacred things and an increase in tourism is not favourable. On the other hand, left-wing people and some academics believe they should not be first designated as National Historic Sites and come to be under the control of the Cultural Properties Protection Law and become open to the wide public before World Heritage inscription.

As a negative effects, people’s attention (the wide public, as well as the government) tend to concentrate on World Heritage sites and forget the other heritage sites or rather regard them less important than WH.

Please share a strategy that you have developed to approach, consult, mitigate, and resolve a challenging issue in your community.

I am not sure if we can call it as a strategy, but… I try to organise things inclusively to all possible stakeholders as much as possible. I try to be as honest and open as possible to provide information to them although we do have some things which we cannot make them open due to our regulation. I believe our strong belief and passion will be conveyed to the others if we work on it hard.

How has your own cultural heritage shaped and/or influenced your professional career?

I grew up in the old downtown and a very famous old shrine was one of my favourite places when I was little. Also, I really like the place where I grew up. Even now I have stroll around in town particularly finding nice old buildings and the like. I was really happy when I got my current job about 12 years ago as Osaka Prefecture is the government where I have been living throughout my life except 8 years in UK. Since I got this job, I have been working hard on as I always want to protect good old nice things I like a lot in this city, my home town. I believe heritage around me and its sentimental value has been one of the big motivations to make me keep going on my career.

What is the most difficult issue right now in Japanese archaeology?

Capacity building is one of the most frustrating things to me now. We hardly have opportunities, system, financial resources (like grants) and time (leave from work, etc) for training ourselves even if we want to step up our professional abilities. Sometimes, ready-set courses of training for a few days are provided by the national government and we may have chances. But often those do not necessarily matche with our needs and also we are too busy to leave our everyday work. Research funds and grants often cannot be used to invest on training and the like. Many young archaeologists with tenure jobs are overwhelmed with everyday work and bureaucracy and do not have enough time for their capacity building. I fear this could cause tragedy in the future.

At this stage now, we do not have enough applicants and candidate when we advertise job vacancy. If the this issue is not solved in near future, the situation would become worse…

About Yumiko:

Senior Archaeologist, Cultural Properties Protection Division, Osaka Prefectural Board of Education. Currently my position is mainly to advise on management of designated sites and mitigation for rescue excavations for the municipal government of Osaka Prefecture. For personal research projects, run and participate in several underwater archaeological research and valorisation projects, mainly in Okinawa area.

On a cloudy but humid summer day in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I am enjoying a brief beach respite with my family while also thinking about the archaeological remains of the destruction of a castle town in sixteenth-century Japan.

I am a historian of late medieval and early modern Japan with a strong interest in material culture. I am not formally trained as an archaeologist but have always consulted with and read the work of archaeologists in Japan, and in previous projects drew extensively on excavation reports and archaeological materials from cities such as Kyoto, Osaka, and Sakai.

While I wait for my second monograph (on material culture and Tokugawa Ieyasu) to be published, hopefully in 2015, I have been doing preliminary work on my third major research project, a study of daily life in late-medieval Japanese castle towns using both archaeological materials and documentary evidence. My main site is the castle town of Ichijodani, near present-day Fukui City. Ichijodani served as the headquarters of the Asakura family of warriors for five generations, from the late fifteenth to the late sixteenth century. It is unusually well preserved as an archaeological site, having been destroyed by the warlord Oda Nobunaga in 1573 but never resettled as an urban center.

Today Ichijodani is a sleepy agricultural community that is home to a marvelous reconstruction of a portion of the town (see below), a fine museum just outside of the valley, and well-preserved ruins of various sorts.

In moments of peace between trips to the beach, I am reviewing my notes from multiple visits to the site and the museum, as well as perusing scans of catalogs, document collections, and other historical materials. I am reading letters and documents about Asakura Takakage (1428-81), who led the Asakura as they supplanted the Shiba warlords as rulers of Echizen province, and Asakura Yoshikage (1533-73), who was the unfortunate head of the family when his lineage and headquarters were destroyed in the period’s violent civil wars. I am also studying images of the luxury Chinese ceramics, the various forms of Echizen pottery, the unglazed and low-temperature ritual vessels, and other materials excavated from homes across the town. Reading these old things alongside their contemporaneous old texts is a challenge and a pleasure.

I’m a spanish researcher who study Asian Archaeology, so I’m in Japan now doing Archaeology, and I’m very excited for be part of the Day of Archaeology 2014! Anywhere that I am, always is nice to share our work! In the photo, I’m working with the materials found in the excavation of the biggest burial mound in Japan, the Tatetsuki burial mound (Okayama, Japan), in a afternoon of relax and research.

Hello, All. I am happy to participate again in the third annual Day of Archaeology (2011, 2012). Congratulations and a big THANK YOU to all of the other participants and volunteers! The past few years have been a wonderful experience – I love seeing what other archaeologists are doing around the globe, as well as sharing my own work.

My name is Molly Swords and I am an historical archaeologist based out of Moscow, Idaho, and employed as a Cultural Resource Specialist III for SWCA Environmental Consultants (SWCA). For the last few years, we have been processing on an enormous archaeological collection for the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD). This project has also led to a new partnership with the University of Idaho as I teach both Applied Cultural Resource Management and Issues in Heritage Management classes.

In keeping with my two previous day of archaeology posts- I’ve chosen to document what my day looked like today…

Kali D.V. Oliver and Theodore Charles, graduate students at the University of Idaho

This morning, I had a lovely start to my day. I met two University of Idaho graduate students for an early morning coffee meeting. We talked about progress on their thesis topics, upcoming conferences where they could present their work, and options to consider as avenues for archaeological publishing.

I dedicated a good portion of my morning and afternoon to editing a couple of technical reports and organizing artifacts for a museum exhibit. The company that I work for, SWCA is putting together a museum exhibit at the Bonner Country Historical Museum on the Sandpoint Archaeological Project with the support of ITD. This exhibit is a fantastic way to illustrate this amazing project to the local community and visitors to Sandpoint. The museum exhibit should be open in mid-August; so, make sure to check it out if you are in the Lake Pend d’Oreille area!

At lunchtime, I decided to call Mary Anne Davis, the Associate State Archaeologist for the Idaho State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO). I wanted to check in with Mary Anne Davis about details for students presenting and the possibility of having a University of Idaho session at the Idaho Heritage Conference (September 25-27). Go Vandals! This year is Idaho’s territorial sesquicentennial (the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s signing of the congressional act creating the Idaho Territory). In celebration of this anniversary, folks and organizations around the state have been hosting events, including a very impressive Idaho Archaeological Month in May, and will continue to observe the sesquicentennial with the first ever Idaho Heritage Conference. This conference is a partnership between of a number of organizations in Idaho (Idaho Archaeological Society, Idaho Heritage Trust, Idaho Association of Museums, Idaho State Historical Society, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Preservation Idaho), all of which will hold their annual meetings, preservations, training, and field trips together for this conference. Mary Anne and I also discussed having something similar to the Day of Archaeology during Idaho Archaeology Month next year.

AACC Stacks of Reference Resources

AACC Comparative Collection

The last part of my day was spent at the Asian American Comparative Collection (AACC), housed at the Alfred W. Bower’s Laboratory of Anthropology at the University of Idaho. I am doing some research on Overseas Chinese for a publication that I am currently writing. If you do not know about the AACC yet, a volunteer coordinator and one of my archaeological heroes, Dr. Priscilla Wegars, runs it. The collection houses around 27,500 entries in the database covering artifacts, documents, bibliography, and images. This collection is such a wealth of information and Priscilla is such a treasure. I wanted to spend some time going through the stacks of resources, including dissertations, theses, and gray literature, to help me shed more light on the Overseas Chinese in the American West. In the span of 40 minutes, Priscilla provided me eleven amazing documents. (Honestly, with Priscilla’s help it took about 10 minutes). When I told Priscilla that I was going to “blog” about my day of archaeology and ending up at the archives she said that I was “excavating the archives.”

AACC Food Storage Jars, typically referred Ginger Jars

** I have included the link for the Asian American Comparative Collection Foundation at the University of Idaho, they are currently accepting donations in order to keep this world-renowned and heavily utilized collection available in the future**

More activity on the project front this morning, following a visit to the Gressenhall offices yesterday by Dr Simon Kaner of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Art and Culture and no fewer than two Professors of Archaeology from Tokyo. We are forging links between Norfolk and Nagawa around common themes such as the mining of obsidian (Japan) and flint (Norfolk – Grimes Graves) and forestry, and hope to develop this into some joint projects in the years ahead, perhaps involving investigations into prehistoric burial mounds in the Brecks, the Iron Age fort and medieval motte and bailey castle at Thetford, and the medieval rabbit warrens in the Brecks. If you’ve not discovered the best rabbit warrening landscape in the world, see http://www.brecsoc.org.uk/projects/warrens-project/

Also a possible future Landscape Partnership project on a stretch of the Norfolk coastline, following on from our previous surveys of heritage assets in the coastal zone, our work on the coastal zone from aerial photographs (English Heritage National Mapping Programme), and current work on access to the coast, including its many heritage assets, from the 700,000+ year old flints at Happisburgh to World War Two coastal defences.

David Gurney, Historic Environment Manager (County Archaeologist), Norfolk County Council

I was displaying a several relic of Toneri site in Japan. I made a display-case of Toneri site in Minumadaishinsuikouen-station of Nippori-Toneri line with my stuff. It’s all exhibit that I discover many relics from Toneri site with my stuff. My relics from Toneri site with my stuff.

Toneri site is from the Kofun period (AD.C3-7th). It’s many ritual relic and old building from Kofun period in Tokyo. This site was around Kenaga Gawa river and was made on the Delta. It’s a community site that has some houses, pits, tombs and some wells in this site. This site has one of the tombs and wells that are some the remnants of an old Ritual building.

I’m an archaeologist living and working in Japan. I’m a researcher of Meiji University Archaeological Investigation Unit. This unit is organized for preventive excavation within university campus.

In Japan, all archaeological sites are conserved under the national law. Local governments develop a registration map of archaeological sites and check all land development. In order to keep to the law, all developer and constructor – not only commercial sector but also public/administrative sector- must make an effort to conserve archaeological sites within their development/ construction area. If they cannot change their plans, they must do excavation. More than 95% of excavations carried out in Japan are this type – preventive excavation…documentation before destruction of sites for those 40yrs.

As you know Japan has large population- about 120 million- in small land. Most parts of our landscape are hilly or mountainous, so our living spaces are definitely limited and overlaid on ancestor’s lived space. This is the cause of so many excavations – more than 8,000 in average/year and the peak was about 12,000 in 1996…- have done every year.

In 2004, our project was started. It was for the construction of new buildings of the university affiliated junior-high and high school. At first we did survey and sounding in total 40,000 sq-meters area, then begun excavation in 18,000 sq-meters area. The excavation continued for 2 years and 5 months – more than 800 days. We unveiled Modern Age (including Imperial Japanese Army and occupation Allied Force sites during WWII ), Jomon Age (mostly Middle Jomon, 6-4.5ka) and the Upper Palaeolithic Age (32-16ka). Now I’m constructing web-site for our excavation (https://sites.google.com/site/japarchresources/ :it’s not completed) .

aerial view of our excavation area in 2005

excavation of the Upper Palaeolithic living floor

excavation of a shelter for air fighter of Imperial Japanese Army during WWII

documentation of the Late Pleistocene staratigraphy

Our excavation was finished in Dec,2007. However it means finishing just the first step only in the field… we have more than 500 containers filled with artefacts such as: 5,000 potsherd and 40,000 pebbles of Jomon, 25,000 lithics and 90,000 pebbles of the Upper Palaeolithic, more than 200GB of digital images and measurement datum by total station system… and so on.

Since 2008, we’re engaging with the post-excavation procedure and it will continue until 2015. We have published the 1st volume of our excavation report this May and will publish other 5 volumes over 5 years.

This is our background. And here I show our habitual day in post-excavation laboratory of our investigation unit. Now we’re tackling with Jomon and the Upper Palaeolithic materials.

The first section is for Upper Palaeolithic pebble refitting work. We uncovered more than 300 stone heaps composed with 90,000 pebbles. Most of pebbles are burnt and fragments. These stone heaps are assumed for cooking, as in the Pacific ethnography.

This work has started in 2010 and will continue for the next 2 years. There are many pebbles in containers waiting for their turn…

Upper Palaeolithic pebble refitting

Upper Palaeolithic pebble refitting(2)

These workers are from the commercial company engaging in preventive archaeology.

more pebbles are waiting their turn...

all containers are fulfilled with material

The second section is for Upper Palaeolithic stone tools (lithic technology) refitting. This work has started in 2007 and will finished this year.

Basically we start from distinguishing chipped stone tools and debitages into petrological classification and making sub-divisions acording to their colour, texture, micro-structure and other characteristics. This is very empiric but very efficient method. Up to now we have documented more than 6,000 cases of refitting in 25,000 specimens of lithic material. In some cases, we can reconstruct original shape of nodule and decode total sequence of knapping technology. Of course, to determine source of raw material, we apply archaeo-scientific analysis.

Lithic refitting work(1)

Lithic refitting work(2)

arrange debitages with raw material, texture and other character

documenting which pieces are and how they are refitting in sequence

The third section is computer application for managing the database, drawing maps and artefacts, geo-spatial analysing and editing publications. We use Microsoft(R) Access(2007)(R) for database managing; Inteli CAD(6.0J) for arranging and original drawings measurement survey datum, 3-dimensional distribution maps of artefacts; Adobe(R) Illustrator(CS5)(R) for drawing artefacts and finising maps and other figures for publication; Arc GIS<sup>(R)</sup>10 for geo-spatial analysing; Adobe(R) InDesign(CS4)(R) for editing publications. Some part of these computer works are put out to commercial companies, those which have specific technique and systems.

computers in our laboratory

a drawing of stone tool (Upper Palaeolithic backed blade)

drawing distribution map of Upper Palaeolithic lithic concentration

database for chipped stone tools of Upper Palaeolithic

geo-spatial analysing of Jomon inter-site components

Post-excavation laboratory working continues…however I hope to go back to the field…yep I should!!!!